Doug Clark: Taking the high road would create a nice buzz

This Year of the Dragon is starting out on a real high.

Monday night, for example, our new so-called “conservative” Spokane City Council agreed unanimously that medical marijuana should be legal and available to those who need it.

So give council members big hookah huzzahs for standing up to the federal government’s pot paranoia.

Being weed free means my knowledge on this subject is limited to Seth Rogen movies.

But I know enough to see medical marijuana as the municipal bong, I mean, boon we’ve all been praying for.

Until they were so rudely shut down by the feds last year, medical marijuana dispensaries were about to become an even bigger growth industry than towing cars out of Browne’s Addition.

Considering the way members of my aging baby boomer generation are falling apart, it wouldn’t be long before Spocannabis was more lucrative to the community than Kaiser during its glory days.

The boost to the local quickie mart Twinkie business alone would be huge.

I’m spitballing here.

But imagine if a medical marijuana dispensary joined forces with, say, Donut Parade.

Think those maple bars are beloved now?

Man, there’d be lines stretching up Hamilton all the way to Francis.

But getting back to the council …

The unanimous vote basically endorsed a letter sent to U.S. drug enforcers by Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee.

Oddly enough, that correspondence was written in teensy little letters on Zig-Zag rolling papers. But I digress.

The point the governors were trying to make is that they would like to see marijuana reclassified from a Schedule 1 drug – like heroin – to a Schedule 2 drug most likely found on Willie Nelson’s tour bus.

Now I appreciate what backbone it took for the council to join this fight. As usual, however, I don’t think our local leaders have gone far enough.

I’ve suffered through a lot of council meetings over the years.

And try as I might, I can’t think of one single gathering that wouldn’t have been vastly improved by a copious infusion of that controversial herb.

I’m seeing drum circles and hacky sack demonstrations and …

OK. That does sound a lot like the previous Verner administration.

But medical marijuana would push the City Council’s entertainment value far beyond that. Who wouldn’t want to watch council members conducting city business while stoned out of their ever-loving gourds?

Channel 5 broadcasts and replays of grass-happy meetings would pull more ratings than American Idol on coronation night.

Want to know what it would be like?

It would be like the Internet clip I just watched of this week’s Joan Rivers reality TV show.

In it, Joan gets some medical marijuana at a dispensary. Then she fires up with a friend in an SUV.

That’s not the shocking part. The shocking part is that as loose as Joan gets, her surgically stretched face somehow keeps from falling into her lap.

Our tight-sphinctered council could definitely use a dose of this giggling hilarity.

To be perfectly honest, I think my entire hometown would benefit from a blanket medical marijuana prescription.

The pot might take our minds off the potholes.

And wouldn’t that be a relief.